Although there is already one Hekaton Suggestion Thread in the Suggestion section, I felt like that thread did not address the
ACTUAL issues inside Hekaton. One example is that potion usage was constantly brought up, but there is more than enough "healing-over-time" effects since the introduction of Aran Legion and HP Recovery familiars.
Table of Contents
*Note: I will not be mentioning Kritias/Invasion Shop Revamp due to it already being suggested by @mako here: https://elluel.net/index.php?thread...-unchanged-the-usual-hekaton-suggestions.420/
- General Hekaton Changes
- Hekaton Skills
- Reducing “Clutter” and Other Unimportant Visuals
- Hekaton Ranking Board
General Hekaton Changes
Maximum Player Count: 50 → 40
Minimum Level to Join: Level 220
Each Hekaton Piece’s HP: x → x/2 (x is equal to whatever Hekaton’s current HP/piece is)
Hekaton’s PDR: 10%? → 300%
Buff Freezers: Available
The current Hekaton allows for 50 players to enter at any given time, yet a huge majority of those players either AFK or enter late and attack at the very end to collect 4 Kritias Coins (2 if Hekaton is not killed). Adding onto this, having so many players in a map causes lag for those who are actually actively participating, which essentially punishes them because of AFKers or leechers. By reducing the amount of participants to 40, we'll have less players who decide to join late to leech for free coins. If a player wants Kritias Coins, they should be expected to show up at the start, not towards the end. The level 220+ requirement change is there as well to reduce leechers, even if it’s by a small margin. Through personal experience, if you aren’t at least level 220, you won’t be doing much damage to Hekaton, so this does not punish players who are actually trying inside Hekaton since everyone who frequently goes is already level 230 or higher. Hekaton is an end-game boss for players to compete with each other, not for AFKers to come late and leech.
This screenshot shows just how many people are AFKing in Hekaton. Note that this does not include the amount of players AFKing in 1 of 4 “Dark Rooms”.
The HP and PDR changes are to make it so Hekaton’s “tankiness” is still roughly the same as it currently is, but classes who hit damage cap easily inside the boss still have a chance to compete for the top rankings. Jobs such as Bishop, Hayato and Marksman all have relatively low amounts of HPM (hits/minute), but have high Damage % skills. This causes them to be somewhat less competitive inside Hekaton after reaching a certain benchmark for equipment. Changing Hekaton’s HP and PDR will allow for more class diversity inside Hekaton, which Blaster, Demon Avenger, Night Lord and Dual Blade make up a huge majority of the jobs.
As for Buff Freezers, during the boss fight, dying occurs often, even if you play perfectly due to unlucky RNG with grabs. Death inside Hekaton already punishes players by reducing the amount of time they have to deal damage. There is no reason why this item should not be available for use during this boss fight. Hekaton should be a difficult boss, but not a boss that has terrible game-play mechanics to make it difficult.
Hekaton Skills Changes
*Note: Attacks that are not listed do not need any changes.
- Red Punch (from Hekaton’s Left Hand): This attack currently does too much damage (60-70% Max HP?) without giving a chance for players to dodge it. Unless your class has a very mobile skill or instant i-Frame, you will almost always get hit by this skill and end up dying since this attack usually happens consecutively. Reducing the attack speed animation of this attack is most likely out of the question, so a proposed change would be to lower the damage dealt by this attack to 40-50% of a player’s Max HP.
- Lightning (from Hekaton’s Left Shoulder): This attack occurs too often consecutively if Hekaton casts it near a group of players. As memed by many older Hekaton go’ers, “Tonight’s Hekaton forecast has a 100% chance of lightning”. When players are trying to attack the Left Shoulder, Hekaton uses this attack way too often, making it almost impossible to survive and attack. This is the reason why a huge majority of the players refuse to attack this body part until near the very end. A proposed change would be to significantly reduce the amount of lightning attacks Hekaton can cast in a certain window of time, but increasing the damage dealt by the attack. Changing this attack like proposed would give players room to actually dodge lightning strikes at the Left Shoulder, but still make it difficult by increasing the damage dealt, so getting hit would be more punishing. Currently, the attack does roughly 10% of a player’s Max HP per tick while inside the lightning hit-box. If lightning attacks were reduced by 50%, a change could be to increase the damage dealt to 20% of a player’s Max HP per tick.
- Grab to a Different Map (from Hekaton’s Bottom Core): Currently, Hekaton can send you to one of four different maps: Bunny Map, Mob Map, Pinball Map, or Jump Quest Map. The first 3 maps are fine as they don’t take too long to deal with (except if your class has low HPM for Bunny), but the Jump Quest one needs to be removed as it takes over 30-seconds to complete and return to your previous location before being grabbed, even if you do the JQ perfectly. Simply getting grabbed into this map for the most competitive players easily means a lower ranking, and all because of terrible RNG. Hekaton’s ranking should be based on damage and a player’s understanding of boss mechanics, not based on how lucky or unlucky you are with grabs.
Reducing Clutter and other Unimportant Visuals
- Making all other characters other than yourself on YOUR screen semi-transparent (Will have to depend on if this is possible or not by the Staff Team)
- Removing certain skill animations on YOUR screen if it is not your own skill
- Removing all chalkboards upon entry and preventing them from being opened during the boss fight
As a few players are already aware, during Phase 1 of Boss: Will, there are two dimensions in one map, but if a player is in the other dimension, their character sprite, as well as their medals and titles, will appear semi-transparent on your screen, similar to all thieves’ Dark Sight. This change was introduced to reduce clutter and make it easier for players to fight the new boss. Introducing this mechanic into Hekaton will make it much easier for players to see what’s going on and where to stand, especially towards the end of the fight when players are grouping up together to kill the last few Hekaton body parts. In the Youtube link below at 2:00, you can see that a few player’s sprite are very transparent as they are in the other dimension, making your own user-interface less cluttered with character sprites and skill animations.
As for removing skill visuals, there are certain skills from certain classes that appear on your screen and restrict your view. Most notably are Bishop and Zero, with their Benediction and Time Distortion skill. Even when you turn “Skill Effect Transparency” for other characters to max transparency, these 2 skills still show up on your screen. The proposed change for this is if you are
NOT the Bishop or Zero casting this skill, the skill should not appear on your screen.
As for Chalkboards, many players often have their Chalkboards from either AFKing in Free Market opened, or purposely putting them up writing things to block other players. The fact that the Chalkboard is not transparent and completely blocks everything behind it means it’s just causing additional visual clutter that should not be there in the first place. In the past, during GM Events, Game Masters themselves would ask all players to remove Chalkboards as it causes the same issue there, blocking player’s view.
Screenshot of just how crowded Hekaton can get towards the end
Hekaton Ranking Board Changes
*Note: I’m not sure if this part of the Hekaton Revamp suggestion is possible or not. Will have to depend on the Staff Team.
Currently, the Hekaton ranking window that appears during the boss fight is dull and does not show anything except a player’s ranking based on damage dealt. As shown in the left screenshot below, all it shows is a player’s name and their world (Scania).
In KMS, the world name is placed there due to the fact that Hekaton is available for all worlds on the KMS Server. However, in AriesMS, the world name is meaningless. Putting a player’s guild, or their actual damage dealt, in trillions, would make it much more meaningful. The former idea would allow players to represent their guild, meanwhile, the latter would give players an actual number of how much damage a single person is doing. Currently, the damage rankings only show damage ranking position, but not actual damage, meaning #4 and #5 on the rankings in a specific run could have a difference of only 200B DPM, or as big as a 3T DPM difference.
Below are examples of what the Hekaton ranking boards could possibly look like (ignore the terrible editing):
